Cédrix Crespel: D I S T A N C E

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery announces Lino Lago’s CRASH the artist’s third solo exhibition with Madison Gallery. Born in Spain in 1973 Lino Lago is known for his peekaboo gestures over realistic oil-painted portraits and interiors creating a palimpsest of the old and the new. In this exhibition Lino’s gestures explode over historically significant themes in his works by master painters of bygone eras, such as the 16th century painter Titian and the great 19th century French Neoclassicist, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

 “Painting was for me always something simple: You just needed to paint what you see. We as artists have a profound understanding of what “to see” really means. A salvage splash of colour contradicts another slow and meticulous work of copying a master classic painting. On one hand I include the past, the process of learning as a fundamental part of us, a humble idea of creation and originality. On the other hand we find it is negation, a daring explosion which destroys and changes everything. A new light. 

The contradictions we are  made of. The everyday fight of memories and dreams, facts and expectations. The wild experience of changing and being alive. The captivating energy’s explosions and acts of courage fueling our successes and mistakes. The unavoidable surprises (old and new) that will always amaze and enrich our minds and senses. Our own views crashing with another’s.” 
– Lino Lago on CRASH

Solana Beach, California- Madison Gallery announces Sensual Dreams, a visual exploration of hedonism, seduction and carnal desire, featuring works on canvas from French painter Cédrix Crespel and Cuban born Ángel Ricardo Ríos. In this exhibition, Cédrix Crespel offers a front row seat to his nearly three decades long love affair with his wife and muse, Tiphaine while Angel Ricardo Rios introduces us to his fantasies, a secret garden, a dreamscape of arousal. Both executing in bold color and brushstroke, compelling the viewer to come further into their worlds, share their fantasies and ultimately leaving us weak in the knees.

“Abstraction? Figuration? The two spaces coexist here without ignoring each other with the hope of a possible symbiosis between what the painter and the lover know, what they can say and everything that vibrates beyond exhausted words. Because the image freezes within the limits of the form. However, time has told us, love is a dance where the fluidity of each new movement calls for possibilities, suggestion and resonances of the eternal.” – Cédrix Crespel 

Cédrix Crespel is an artist who symbolizes a generation open to its era culture. He examines the representation of one woman. In the middle of the 90s, aware of the need for artists to lay down roots in their culture, he soon abandoned academic drawing, renounced pencils and lines, inventing a figurative form of expression. His painting is a sensual odyssey an adaptation of images of independent and passionate women who defy roles that society wants to give them. He teaches us, whether we like it or not, to get rid of our certainties to enter a universe where his women love to be coveted in this way. From the tension in desire to the obsessions haunting him, Cédrix Crespel implies the sexual and sensual, and the reverse. For four years now, it is no longer a question of painting the muse but of showing the couple in a relationship to absolute love.

“The blur, the background, the underside is the subject. It fixes Her image. From a distance, on the surface, I apply what represents me with my historic practice. By these two techniques I create a depth of field comparable to photography.
The distance between these two layers is precisely what I focus on, what I seek to paint. a ‘3rd entity’ ‘the link that connects us’, the unpaintable, the unrepresentable.” – Cédrix Crespel 

“I believe that painting with my hands transmits positivity and hope in the artwork. I like to touch and feel the paint that has an energy the paintbrush can’t transmit. The brush is too cold.” – Ángel Ricardo Ríos

Ángel Ricardo Ríos was born in Cuba in 1965 and is a graduate of the Higher Institute of Art in Havana Cuba. Employing a direct application of pigment to canvas, Ríos expresses in vibrant colors.  With a quick, sure hand, or made using his body to apply paint, Ríos’ meld of Expressionist and Neobaroque recalls the theatrical presence celebrated in Spanish Baroque. Ríos’ work has an eagerness to it, a blur of boundaries within the space that it occupies. The mixing and intertwining of subjects give way to explosions of color, texture, shape. To understand Ríos’ work one must acknowledge two essential elements. The first is a playful, joyful and intimate relationship that takes the form of an intense, frenzied sexual nature within the composition. Juxtaposed to this is one that is more relaxed and direct. 

Solana Beach, California – Announcing Robert Montgomery’s THE FUTURE IS AN INVISIBLE PLAYGROUND, the artist explores the universal themes of Ecology, Equality, Kindness and above all Hope. 

“We do not know what the future holds for us, but it will be ours, and it can be positive if we work together to make it so”. – Robert Montgomery

Cutting to the core of the most crucial issues of our times, Montgomery who defines himself as an “artist who works with poetry,” works in language and is best known for his site-specific installations, light, solar, fire and space. Commenting on our contemporary society and highlighting his personal and philosophical beliefs, he engages completely with the public through his evocative, cryptic, and emotionally resonant art. Verse after verse of translucent and intuitive poetry, Montgomery invites us to reflect on ways to salvage paradise, rebuilding it from wreckage and going back to a natural sense of peace through an awe-inspiring melancholic yet hopeful lyrics.

The artist will offer a reading of his work during the opening and a special signed print edition of Montgomery’s, “The Peace Poem” will be made available for purchase with proceeds benefitting Choose Love, the Ukraine Emergency Appeal. 

Robert Montgomery was born in 1972 in Scotland. He was initially inspired by the graffiti artists of East London, the concrete poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin, but also the philosophy of Guy Debord, and the art of James Turrell. He was the British artist selected for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, the first biennale in India, and the Yinchaun Biennale in 2016. He has had made public installations across Europe including major outdoor light installations on the site of the old US Air Force base at Tempelhof in Berlin. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas and the Albright Knox in New York. He has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. Most recently he has collaborated with Little Sun’s Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen for the UN Climate Conference COP26 2021 in Glasgow UK . His work is hugely popular on the internet, the piece “The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You” has been shared online more than 20 million times.

Solana Beach, California – In honor of Donald Martiny’s inclusion in the PERSONAL STRUCTURES Exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale, Madison Gallery announces TIME SPACE EXISTENCE a retrospective of the artist’s important works dating from 2013 to the present. Many of these works were included in Donald Martiny’s first major solo exhibition, Freeing the Gesture at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and are available for private acquisition for the first time.

“In the 1950s, artists like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline elevated the gesture to the position of the protagonist in abstract expressionism. In the 21st century, Donald Martiny advances that idea considerably further by freeing the gesture of gestural abstraction from the substrate which, heretofore, provided the context that brought gesture to life. Working with polymers and dispersed pigments, Mr. Martiny has developed a methodology that enables him to isolate his sumptuous, almost sculptural, brushstrokes and lift them off the page, so to speak. The nature of his material is such that Mr. Martiny can work on a much larger scale than if he were dependent on a canvas surface; indeed, each singular brushstroke might range from two- to as much as six feet in length. Installed, these compelling monochromatic gestures immediately breathe a new kind of life into the gallery space. 

Historically, Mr. Martiny’s work to date fits right into the continuum of monochromatic painting, a contemporary reductive movement that has advanced the concerns and broadened the interests of the classic Minimalists of the 1960s and of the much earlier Suprematists, who openly sought the ‘death of painting” with their monochromatic efforts. Mr. Martiny belongs to a family of painters, including such luminaries as Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, and Olivier Mossett. Amazingly, these distinguished artists brought something noticeably different to this admittedly singular and restrictive approach to painting. Before Mr. Martiny, though, each of these other great painters relied on manipulating the relationship between canvas and pigment to achieve subtle, nuanced differences in each painting. Mr. Martiny has greatly expanded the painterly agenda by taking the brushstroke completely off the canvas entirely. I applaud his commitment to furthering the monochromatic agenda and his ability to make fresh, new work that acknowledges, rather than negates, decades of previous good work. Rather than hastening the death of painting as Rodchenko forecast, monochromatic painting has already enjoyed a long lifeline and, in the hands of Donald Martiny, is alive and well.” -Charles Shepard III, Director, Ft Wayne Museum of Art 

Solana Beach, California – Announcing our first public opening in over two years, Madison Gallery welcomes Australian painter, sculptor and muralist, Elliott Routledge (FUNSKULL) in his inaugural US solo exhibition, EUPHORIA.

EUPHORIA is a collection of large-scale paintings that dance around the concept of happiness and the melange of emotions that live alongside it. Balanced compositions of audacious, intensely saturated colors are overlaid and floated amongst the obscured iconic smiley face symbol, which has become an intrinsic part of Routledge’s visual mantra. As we reemerge from the last two years, these paintings act as a reflection of ourselves in a type of celebration of the sudden euphoria we are about to experience in the new world. We are posed with the question of who we are, what is our life’s purpose and how do we paint the new version of our own happiness.

With these works Routledge is seeking to create a singular sense of harmony and euphoria without any one of the shapes or gestural marks being the same or being restricted to any given line or angle. A montage of uniquely individual elements, living together on the canvas to create the one emotion or being. Not constricted to the borders of the canvas, the work fractures over the edge and interacts with the walls and environment surrounding it, giving the audience the role of imagining where the piece starts and ends. Much like his public large-scale murals, there is ultimately a sense of pure joy to be experienced within the abstract and bright hued microcosm being portrayed.

Elliott’s practice spans across canvas paintings, sculpture, and large-scale public works. He was a feature of the Art & About Festival in Sydney and the SODO Track international mural festival in Seattle, USA, and has also been shown in the Museums Quartier, Vienna as a part of his 2014 Residency. He has collaborated with Nike, Converse, Moncler, RVCA and Mercedes AMG.

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery announces the opening of Hunt Slonem’s , Bunnies, Bunnies and more Bunnies! The artist’s 8^th solo exhibition in our San Diego gallery celebrates Hunt’s most iconic and beloved imagery, Bunnies. Both whimsical and relatable, Hunt’s signature “self-portraits” take on a life all of their own. We invite you on this magical journey into the fantasy world of Hunt Slonem.

Every morning, upon rising – even before he’s had his first cup of coffee – Hunt Slonem performs his daily warm-ups . He approaches his work table where a stack of small rectangular panels awaits. Some of the panels are made of wood, some of Masonite. In the course of the next half hour he will have populated all the panels with rabbits. These warm-ups are, as John Berendt calls them, “the artistic equivalent of calisthenics in which he flexes his painting apparatus to establish control over the colors, shapes, and textures that flow from his mind’s eye through his arm, hand, and brush on the painted surface.” Hunt Slonem paints countless other subjects, but the bunnies always begin his day. ” This witty formalist strategy meshes the creatures into the picture plane and something nearly obliterates them as images, but it also suspends and shrouds them in a dim, atmospheric light that is quite beautiful”- Roberta Smith

“I didn’t know at the time why I picked them [bunnies]. I liked them, and I’ve had them as pets off and on my whole life. I was using them in groups at the feet of saints. I don’t know: something about luck and multiplicity. I also just liked the shape, and they’re cuddly. Then one night I was having Chinese food and I looked down and realized I am the sign of the rabbit. So maybe they’re sort of all self-portraits?” – Hunt Slonem in Bunnies

Hunt Slonem is an American painter and sculptor. He is best known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings, whose works are included in many important museum collections all over the world; he is exhibiting regularly at both public and private venues, and he has received numerous honors and awards. Slonem’s works can be found in the permanent collections of 250 museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Whitney, the Miro Foundation and the New Orleans Museum of Art. 

San Diego, California – Madison Gallery is proud to announce Colombian artist Santiago Parra’s return to Madison Gallery for his 2nd solo exhibition after a complete sell-out show in the Spring of 2020.

Santiago Parra is known for his large, abstract, and highly expressive black and white paintings. His canvases capture the suspended flatness of the calligraphy-like imagery, harmonizing two seemingly incompatible aesthetic moments, spontaneity and pondering, which are all shaped by movement, strength, gravity, and skill of the Columbian artist’s creative process. He explores the expressive possibilities of the quintessential abstract form. With an audacious manner, he redefines abstract structures with bold sculptural brushstrokes. His work is both an aesthetic exploration and a questioning of the essence of abstract image-making. Parra’s work is the embodiment of automatism, the method of art-making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process. Automatism was developed by Surrealists with the ultimate goal to express one’s inner world in the purest most accurate way, without the control or judgment of social pressures exerted by consciousness. An interesting quality to this way of working is that the paintings are direct unfiltered reflections of Parra’s personal resonance within them.

“Conceptually I am looking at them [the blank canvas and black paint] as radiographs of my inner self, pictures of my life’s pulsion’s, the images of my inner energy, what constitutes me being alive.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of my work, it is not something new but rather a recurring theme. It’s difficult in my case as all my work is rooted in non-rational procedures, by essence it is impossible to have a direct observation of what goes on in each painting. It is like waking up and trying to remember what the dream was but even here it is much more difficult. I constantly try every time I paint to be absolutely focused on what is going on but just before I begin, I enter a sort of unconscious trance, during those seconds the canvas is painted. When I come back into consciousness, I lift the brush and the painting is finished. What is the resulting image? Through all this year I’ve learned to identify when a painting is just a senseless scribble and when it carries meaning. It is usually decided beforehand, that’s why I only paint when I feel I have something to say, it is not just about creating a pretty picture it is about unearthing what lays deep in my soul. These paintings constitute an unconscious language, spoken words from the other side of consciousness.”

– Santiago Parra

Shaped by movement, strength, gravity, complete unpredictability, and the uniqueness of Santiago Parra’s approach to abstraction, his works are an exploration of the expressive possibilities of the quintessential abstract form. Soft and light or explosive with intention Santiago’s work immortalizes personal history in paint, a moment in time captured through a stream of consciousness.

Santiago Parra is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, USA, Jorge Peŕ ez Collection, USA, Jean et Colette Cherqui Collection, France, Tanya C. Brillembourg Collection, USA, Solita Mishaan Collection, Spain, Cesar Gaviria Collection, Colombia, Kehinde Wiley Collection, USA, and Collection Lazaro, Spain.

Madison Gallery announces, California Psychics a solo exhibition of large-scale paintings by William LaChance..

“CALIFORNIA PSYCHICS is a series of large-scale, frieze-like paintings as escapist freedom fantasies painted largely during peak COVID lockdown and spanning to the present. The compositions of staggered, vertical bands imply the filmic rhythm of walking past without stopping- a conscious nod to the vacant barstools in Edward Hopper’s isolation anxiety masterpiece, “Nighthawks”. The colors, shapes and scale relationships recall the randomness of skateboard motifs bedecked with miscellaneous stickers or perhaps the brightly colored iron-on transfers of bygone t-shirt shops — or in other cases, the unfamiliar logos and vernacular signage of foreign bodegas- all visual intimations of being somewhere else in time and place.  “

William LaChance (b. 1971, St Louis, Missouri) lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated with a BFA from The Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Indiana University. LaChance’s pictures are associations of displaced forms and colors cribbed from graphic design, fashion, art history and nature itself cobbled together using a variety of methods and materials from painting and printmaking to assemblage and sewing. The paintings themselves have shifting hierarchies of similar concerns: of material exploration, abstract identity, formal space and narrative expression. They openly blur the boundary between high art and applied arts not only in principle but in practice- lending themselves to various manner of surface design, from textiles and branding to fully realized earthworks. LaChance’s recent mural adorning the Kinloch Park basketball courts was named the best designed basketball court in the world by Architectural Digest. Since 2015, LaChance has exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Athens, Miami, San Diego, Amsterdam and Tokyo. His works have been collected extensively in private and public collections worldwide, including NIKE, Pernod Ricard, Warby Parker, The U.S. Federal Reserve, Hobbes London, Milla Jovovich, Sergio Marchionne / Ferrari and NBC. He has received press both online and in print, including Artsy, Juxtapoz, Forbes, Vogue, L’Officiel, Surface, Dezeen, Architectural Digest and Le Mille.

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery is proud to present Los Angeles-based construction- minimalist Lori Cozen-Geller’s third solo exhibition, Minimal Movement. Below, the artist shares her thoughts and vision while creating these works under such diverse times.

“My new body of work represents choosing perseverance, strength and vigor despite the circumstances. Positivity directs each sculpture in a way that allows the work to appear to open up and move towards its goal. The use of vibrant automotive paint finishes, and dynamic shapes help launch the sculptures in the direction of a boldly optimistic perspective. My core belief in the power of positivity is encapsulated in this body of work.” – Lori Cozen-Geller

“Cozen-Geller is indeed a minimalist, following in the wake of hundreds of principally (if by no means exclusively) American artists who have pared down their formal vocabularies to essences. But Cozen-Geller wants something different out of large, simple shapes than do most of her minimalist predecessors and cohorts: she wants meaning. Symbolic meaning. Iconography, that is, as recognizable (if not necessarily self-evident) to the untrained viewer as a stop sign – albeit far less literal. “– Peter Frank art critic

A Los Angeles, CA native, Cozen-Geller’s education includes a BA from the University of Southern California. She has exhibited throughout New York, Los Angeles, Aspen, Germany, and China. Cozen-Geller’s work is found in public collections such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Ventura Country Museum in Ventura, California and the MOAH, Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California.    

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery announces Lino Lago’s ODALISQUE, the Spanish painter’s second solo exhibition with Madison Gallery.  Lino Lago is known for his bold splashes of color over realistic oil-painted portraits, creating a palimpsest of the old and the new. In this exhibition Lino explores the historically significant theme of Odalisque in works by master painters of bygone eras, such as the 16^th century painter Titian and the great 19^th century French Neoclassicist, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

“I believe the biggest challenge we face now is the correct understanding of our tradition and novelty. So, the question is, How original are we? My paintings present the fight between tradition and novelty. This is for me the most important theme in our lives – a universal one. Consciously I sacrifice part of “our modern” originality by painting old masters’ women’s portraits as the base of my works. That part of the painting represents the standard, the tradition, the normative. These portraits are covered by a colorful layer letting us see a small part of it through a single improvised twisted line. I like to see that bright pure color as a symbol of the new, the present, the near… but, in some way also as the thing that makes us blind. 

Odalisque, is one of the feminine-form representations in Academic painting of the 19th century, as we see for example in Dominique Ingres. We can be surprised that his most famous Odalisque was commissioned by a woman, Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister. Women commissioning this kind of nude was something common at that time. Contrary to what we may think, women’s nudes were reflections of powerful women. I (dare) to compare to the FEMEN, feminist protesters of today. The Odalisque in its time, being probably bolder than FEMEN or nudes in contemporary happenings. Dominique Ingres’ The Grand Odalisque itself was not well understood (even accused of archaicism) in his time but revindicated by 20^th century modernity.

This is a rule in History: People can’t see the “whole picture” living in their own times. We need the perspective of time to see more clearly. The present’s noise is distorted by different subjectivities, points of view and interest. I see that part of that noise is the misinterpretation of the past. In my paintings I try to symbolize that matter of fact: We understand and see just a small part of the reality. That clash of views, basically tradition and novelty, is what the Fake Abstract paintings represent for me” -Lino Lago on the exhibition Odalisque

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents TRISTAN CHORD, Donald Martiny’s 4th solo exhibition with Madison Gallery, is so titled for the opening phrase of Wagner’s opera, Tristan and Isolde. This collection consists of multi-components, harmonizing in minimal, tonal work and made of polymer and pigments.

“The art of Donald Martiny exists somewhere between painting and sculpture. We are confronted with a singular brushstroke, huge, a seemingly spontaneous, lavish eruption of color and texture on the wall. It is the mark distilled from painting, the formerly minute detail writ large, what we usually discover as a hidden and obscured part of the whole is made to be the whole itself, the entire work a gesture on the wall. 

Such dramatic works are fit for public art – Martiny is currently preparing to install a large work on the exterior of a building in Raleigh, North Carolina and is well known for his permanent displays in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. But they also lend themselves to powerful aesthetic experiences in more intimate galleries, as will be evident in upcoming solo shows in February 2021 at Madison Gallery in Solana Beach, California and in March 2021 at the Scala del Bovoli in Venice, Italy.

How did Martiny come to these oversized gestural works? Normally, the canvas frames the work, or else is itself framed, and the plane delineated by the canvas’ edge creates the ground from which a figure will arise. Sometimes the figures are strictly representational of human forms, of flora and fauna, and other times we are treated to compositions suggestive of moods, abstract expressions of a concept or emotion and so on. Whatever the content, whatever level of literalness present within the edges of the canvas, there is something that stands out from the ground of the canvas. The canvas itself sinks into the background and by becoming this background makes it possible for whatever appears to the viewer to appear. But there is no canvas to form the ground of Martiny’s work. The wall on which the work is mounted becomes the ground, the room itself, the gallery or museum is the ground.” -Donovan Irven – White Hot Magazine

‘The Sea has No name for America’ is Scottish-born and London based urban poet Robert Montgomery’s second solo exhibition with Madison Gallery. Known for infamous light works and monochrome billboard installations in 2004 Robert highjacked his first billboard telling the Daily Beast that he was sick of being assaulted with “meaningless and idotic” consumer ads. Montgomery is a master of the written word his pieces are thought proving and polarized wrestling with complex issues as the accretion of consumeristic culture as well as soc-political and ecological responsibility. In what normally would be considered contrary they simultaneously are also dreamy and whimsical about love, power, hope, and human kindness.

This new body of work is different than the large electric lights plastered across breathtaking landscapes that launched Robert into internet history in 2010. Although they entice the viewer to reflect on similar themes, these paintings are personal, deeply reflective, softer and nod at the modernist movement from a hundred years ago through the use of iconography and geometric abstraction.

In an interview with ArtNet Robert writes of the Mantra series highlighted in this exhibition.

“The “Mantra” paintings are little things I need to get through the day. We live in a time when bad news is upon us constantly. The spectacle that used to be on television is on our phones and on our bodies, in a way. I was thinking of positive mantras that I need to protect myself from the spectacle.”

In the same interview, Robert revealed he hopes the viewer “will reflect on the last hundred years of modern history and art history and see the ghosts of that in the work, and then reflect on this very difficult point in socio-political and ecological history that we’re in now too.”

October 3^rd – November 14^th,  2020

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents noted Colombian artist Santiago Parra’s first West Coast solo exhibition. Parra is known for his large, abstract and highly expressive black and white paintings. His canvases capture the suspended flatness of the calligraphy-like imagery, harmonizing two seemingly incompatible aesthetic moments, spontaneity and pondering, which are all shaped by movement, strength, gravity and skill of the Columbian artist’s creative process. He explores the expressive possibilities of the quintessential abstract form. This exhibition focus on the recurring motifs Santiago has identified in his work;

“Lately I’ve started to see recurring patterns in the paintings, underlying structures, an unpremeditated order. This formations, often concatenations of an archetypical geometry have become ineludible to my eyes. Ive always been intrigued by the source of this arrangements but never before have they appeared so manifestly than in some of the works in this exhibition. With Archetype Ive come to ask myself a question: If this underlaying geometry emerges from the subconscious, do we all have access to a common pool of archetypical forms ? Does geometry lives inside of us not only as the pattern shaping our organic tissues but also as images abiding in our subconscious?”

The dynamics of Santiago Parra’s art complete when beheld by its audience. The force of Parra’s aesthetics and the persuasive reasoning – or, perhaps, avoidance of reasoning – that locates his method in the mysteries of his own consciousness invoke the viewer’s own unmodulated response. The scale of the paintings gives them a theatrical cast, to be sure, but also makes them seem – feel – as natural as the weather. Parra seeks to capture raw experience with them, knowing full well that “raw experience” is defined by, among other things, its uncapturability. But all art is approximate, and Parra’s less so than most. “Art” may be a cultural construct, but on that construct Parra constructs his own ur-cultural experience.

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents noted Spanish artist Lino Lago’s first North American solo exhibition of his ongoing series, Fake Abstract.

This exhibition focuses on original works from Lino Lago’s ongoing, Fake Abstract series in which Lago explores a language distinctly his own, referencing traditional portraiture of bygone eras “abstracted” with contemporary minimalism. Employing traditional materials and methods, the artist invites us to engage in

Within the entire “Fake Abstract” series we can see versions of classical painters’ female portraits painted with traditional form. But we can only see a part of them through an abstract line over a solid color background. In other works, geometric figures of screaming colors appear overlapping the portrait. A realistic part contrasts with another – an abstract one, but these do not mix, they remain clearly differentiated. All of my paintings represent a fight of a realistic standard with an abstract one. On one side stands the tradition, and in the other – its negation, the novelty or the revolution.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career, and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate, and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents Midsummer Nights Dream, internationally celebrated neo-expressionist artist Hunt Slonem’s sixth solo exhibition at Madison Gallery.  Considered one of the great colorists of his time, his paintings feature an exuberant and bold, fauvist palette to emphasize his beloved menagerie of animals. His spiritual practice provides the inspiration for his Warholesque repetitive compositions. Midsummer Nights Dream is a window into the imagination and vision of this exceptional artist and Renaissance man.

This witty Formalist strategy meshes the creatures into the picture plane and sometimes nearly obliterates them as images, but it also suspends and shrouds them in a dim, atmosphere light that is quite beautiful. “- Roberta Smith, The New York Times  

Since 1977, Hunt Slonem has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. His work is exhibited globally, in cities including Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Slonem’s work is in over eighty museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Kansas City’s own Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He is highly collected by artists and celebrities alike like Yoko Ono, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Stone, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz and Mary Tyler Moore, among others.

Solana Beach, 18 September, 2019 – Madison Gallery presents James Verbicky’s tenth solo exhibition, Lost Where I Belong. This exhibition will examine Verbicky’s creative progression. From his sculptural mixed media paintings composed of vintage periodicals to his new Citta Samtana: REBIRTH serieson canvas. By utilizing vintage media and graphics, advertisements, and obsolete branding materials, Verbicky presents us with the result of decades of attempts to persuade, manipulate, and coerce through subtle and suggestive imagery. His works are at once deeply conceptual and hauntingly beautiful and abstract, capturing both forgotten and persisting icons of media and reminding us that we are all constantly being influenced.

“I’ve taken my Citta Samtana Series, formerly built with forgotten ephemera, and deconstructed it, rebuilding it as a looser, more intuitive sequence of paintings. I’ve used inverted compositions from unrelated and wild studio sessions, dissected the canvases, and built each piece layer upon layer. Lost Where I Belong means truly that: what you’re seeing is a window into time: a glimpse, a fragment of my mindset and the cathartic and unpredictable experience of working with the paint.”  – James Verbicky

Verbicky collaborates frequently with philanthropic organizations, using his artwork to contribute to nonprofits like the Waterkeeper Alliance and the Art of Elysium. He has been the focus of international exhibitions ranging from Berlin to Bangkok, Beirut to New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles. His pieces have been auctioned by Sothebys & Christie’s, and are counted in thousands of important private, public, celebrity and museum collections in countries all over the world.

Solana Beach, 2^nd April, 2019 – Madison Gallery presents Donald Martiny’s third solo exhibition, SINGULARFORMS. The title refers to the singular form defined by the physicality and the intimacy between the work and artist. Martiny creates a gap between painting and sculpture and rejects the two-dimensional canvas or panel to establish a relationship between space and viewer. These paintings are not layered but mixed into one form; they are dynamic, complex and very personal.

“I want my paintings to possess their own life force, their own “breath of life.” I want to offer an intimate, engaging, and authentic experience between the viewer and the artwork. Additionally, I work hard to create work that has a dialogue with the history of painting but at the same time is not beholden to it.”  – Donald Martiny

Martiny’s work concentrates on the importance of the brushstroke as a real means of connection between artist and material. The artist employs pigments, polymer and gallons of paint, sometimes between 30-40 at a time, to create the right color and viscosity to produce each individual composition. He never thinks of, or use color in a political or symbolic way, nor does he approaches color in a scientific or theoretical way like say Goethe, Chevreul, Itten, or Albers. He experiences painting as pushing and moving pure sensation and feeling, i.e., joy, tragedy, tenderness, affection, love, passion, energy, ardor. More than an exploration of optics or beauty his use of color is a kind of spiritual quest.

Martiny’s work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including the Fort Worth Museum of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, Alden B Dow Museum of Art, Falmouth Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art and the Cameron Art Museum. In 2015 Martiny received a commission from the Durst Organization to create two monumental paintings that are permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. In 2015 Martiny received the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts Residency Grant and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, NPR, Philadelphia Inquirer, VOGUE LIVING | Australia, New American Paintings | South and Woven Tale Press.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fith year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Madison Gallery presents Voices, a group  exhibition featuring the work of Ángel Ricardo
Ríos, Lino Lago and Damián Aquiles. These three Latin artists bring their independent
voices and aesthetic sensibilities to the contemporary art world. They create a
universal language of common expression to convey their message; a message of
beauty and life.

Cuban born Ángel Ricardo Ríos’ work emphasizes the dialogue between artist and canvas. He refuses the standard methods of painting and employs his hands as his main tool. His work is ultimately an exploration of human truth and eroticism. To understand Ricardo’s work one must acknowledge two essential elements. The first is a playful, joyful and intimate relationship that takes the form of an intense, frenzied sexual nature within the composition. Juxtaposed to this is one that is more relaxed and direct.

Spanish artist Lino Lago explores color and art history while referencing to Pop Art sensibilities in Fake Abstract Series. With one clear sweep he brings a classic Master portrait painting into the foreground like a untold secret. This series challenges the intricate dichotomy between classic and contemporary aesthetics as it confronts the minimalism of a monochrome with a detail of a masterpiece. 

Damián Aquiles chooses to work with found materials from his native Cuba, such as, Russian and Hungarian vintage cars, water tanks and refrigerators for the concentrated energy that emanates from them, by recycling these materials; he uses their previous life, energy and history to tell his own story in the Walking Men Series.

Venue: 320 S Cedros, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 19th
Opening Reception Hours: 6-9 pm
Contact us: 858-523-9155, info@madisongalleries.com

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents Black Desert, a group exhibition featuring the work of James Austin Murray and Mareo Rodriguez. These two artists find inspiration in light as the most important source of energy and life.

Known for his large-scale, monochromatic black oil paintings, James Austin Murray’s work invites the viewer to look beyond the black canvas and see infinite colors and forms. His gestural brushstrokes create wave patterns, which reflect light from the surface and provide a layered and wondrous landscape that is captivating and ever mysterious. The black paint becomes a beacon of light in each composition.

James Austin Murray is a graduate of Parsons School of Design, New York, NY (1992). He has exhibited throughout New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and East Hampton, NY. He is a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship Award for residency at The Vermont Studio Center, VT and has completed residencies at The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY and Bermis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. Murray’s work is found in public collections such as Sofitel (Philadelphia, PA), Hotel Palomar (Philadelphia, PA), Four Seasons Hotel (Washington, D.C.), Omni Hotel (Nashville, TN) and Tom Ford (Designer). James Austin Murray lives and works in New York City.

Barcelona based and Colombian bred sculptor, painter and architect Mareo Rodriguez’s work is filled with the grittiness of natural territory: mountains, rocks, waveforms and lava. Nature, the ever-changing topography of the mountains and the condensation of light and its process of transformation and expansion of energy over time are his biggest inspiration. He says: ’Matter is light condensed.’ Referring to matter as a process of transformation and expansion of energy over time. His work is constantly moving like a tectonic plate and depicts beautiful earth forces. ‘I seek to cover different scales within my artistic approach.’ Mareo has previously exhibited internationally in Spain, Italy, France, Canada and England, among others. This will be his first exhibition on the West Coast.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents Spatial Acuity, opening on September 22nd, 2018, featuring the work of Michigan based paper engineer Matthew Shlian and Australian bred light sculptor Jason Sims. The exhibition examines the detailed exploration of perception, light and space.

Self-described paper engineer, Matthew Shlian’s work is rooted in print media, book arts and commercial design. Beginning with an initial fold, a single action causes a transfer of energy to subsequent folds, which ultimately manifest in drawing and three-dimensional forms. Matthew uses his engineering skills to create kinetic sculpture, which have led to collaborations with scientists at University of Michigan. This work is based on the nanoscale, translating paper structures to micro folds. These investigations extend to visualizing cellular division and solar cell development. Researchers see paper engineering as a metaphor for scientific principles; Matt sees their inquiry as a basis for artistic inspiration.

Jason Sims is interested in the ways in which people create meaning in their lives – how perception and choice directly impact our reality. His work seeks to explore what it means to exist, inviting contemplation of the structures in which we live, physically and socially, and presenting an endless expanse of infinite possibility. Jason has had several solo exhibitions and exhibited in numerous group shows throughout Australia and abroad, including SafARI, an unofficial fringe event to the 2010 Sydney Biennial of Contemporary Art held at Firstdraft. In 2010, ArtBank commissioned three of Jason’s pieces to add to their collection. He has been a finalist in the Tom Malone Prize for the past 3 consecutive years and recently had his work collected by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Exhibition dates: November 10th, 2018 – January 7th, 2019
Venue: 320 S Cedros, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Opening Reception: November 10th, 2018
Opening Reception Hours: 6-9 pm

Contact us: 858-523-9155, info@madisongalleries.com

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents Gatekeeper: World Of Folly, internationally celebrated neo-expressionist artist Hunt Slonem’s fifth solo exhibition at Madison Gallery. Considered one of the great colorists of his time, his paintings feature an exuberant and bold, fauvist palette to emphasize his beloved menagerie of animals. His spiritual practice provides the inspiration for his Warholesque repetitive compositions. Gatekeeper: World Of Folly is a window into the imagination and vision of this exceptional artist and Renaissance man.

Coinciding with the opening reception on Saturday, November 10th from 6-8 pm will be a book signing of his recent publication, Gatekeeper World Of Folly along with fan favorite Bunnies.

Since 1977, Hunt Slonem has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. His work is exhibited globally, in cities including Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Slonem’s work is in over eighty museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Kansas City’s own Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He is highly collected by artists and celebrities alike like Yoko Ono, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Stone, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz and Mary Tyler Moore, among others.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Exhibition dates: August 4th – September 3rd
Venue: 320 S Cedros, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Opening Reception: August 4th, 2018
Opening Reception Hours: 6-9 pm

Contact us: 858-523-9155, info@madisongalleries.com

Solana Beach, California – Madison Gallery presents Kansas City based post abstract-expressionist artist Jane Booth and her series Narratives. Often creating monumentally scaled, color saturated canvases, her process is tactile and physical. Booth begins with large swaths of raw canvas on the floor. Engaging all of her senses, she accesses a nonverbal internal landscape, translating into a felt sense of color and mark. Paint is poured and pushed by hand into the canvas; the degrees of separation between feeling and fulfillment are narrow.

This series narrates the physicality and experience of being human. The imagery is raw and initially unedited, accessing interior and exterior landscapes to begin, recorded with stick, brush, palms of hands, screwdrivers, pencil, crayon, spray paint, filled with an array of sensory and intellectual experiences.

Booth’s work and movement emerges for the next mark and in that way, it becomes a dialogue. Like a Jazz melody, her work consists of free movement: choreography between artist and canvas. Working with unprimed canvas, Booth layers color stains, building a base of saturated hues. Those layers of stain create a luminous quality in the paintings. The scale of her works evokes the expanse of Kansas and her passion for natural beauty. Her work is in over 600 private and corporate collections and museums.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

After a decade of consistently presenting an internationally recognized program in La Jolla, Madison Gallery has moved to a new location in the Cedros Design District of Solana Beach. The grand opening on Saturday, May 26th 2018 features its inaugural exhibition, New Generation, with artists James Verbicky, Olivia Steele and Robert Montgomery and is sponsored by KARMA Automotive, Modern Luxury Magazine, FIT Gym, GEM&BOLT Mezcal, Hitching Post Wines and Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty, with beats by Josh Hartley. This exhibition reflects on the instinctual intercommunication between artist and viewer and how methods of conversation are constantly evolving; yet the message remains the same. Words are power and bring new light to newer generations.

The three dimensional surfaces of Canadian born artist, James Verbicky’s mixed-media works transcend traditional painting and venture into the realm of sculpture. By utilizing vintage media and graphics, advertisements, and obsolete branding materials, Verbicky presents us with the result of decades of attempts to persuade, manipulate, and coerce through subtle and suggestive imagery. His works are at once deeply conceptual and hauntingly beautiful and abstract, capturing both forgotten and persisting icons of media and reminding us that we are all constantly being influenced.

KARMA Automotive partners with artists like Verbicky, who share the company’s trailblazing and innovative DNA. For his work on the Karma Revero, Verbicky used hand-painting and stencil techniques to apply meticulous layers of color and follow the sensuous lines of the car’s body. Verbicky’s color fields, evocative language, and symbolic imagery are used to accentuate and emphasize the soul of the Karma Revero. The result is a vehicle art piece that is modern yet timeless.

Light artist Olivia Steele personifies the contemporary storyteller and uses the traditional medium of neonto form her striking expressions that address the vortex of modernity. Her neon works are short, punctuatedtruths that mirror the ingenuity (or malaise) of the digital age. Her expansive career has seen her impartfragments of wisdom and wit all over the globe, from Tulum to Berlin to Mumbai in the form of site-specific land art and indoor installation.

Scottish artist and poet, Robert Montgomery follows the tradition of conceptual art while bringing a poetic voice to text-based art. In such, he occupies a delicate space between street art and academia, bringing his slyly political art to the public sphere. His aim is to address all- encompassing, universal themes such as power, love, and human kindness in electric light—or, dramatically, even fire. His simple, graphic poems have since been plastered, often illegally, over advertisements and billboards internationally.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

La Jolla, California – Madison Gallery presents Los Angeles based artist Lori Cozen-Geller and her retrospective exhibition, Origins, which will comprehensively examine her career trajectory and minimalist approach. White will serve as the main palette as it is a source of purity and renewal. Her architectural sculptures, constructed out of industrial materials such as steel, wood and automobile paint tied with her interest in the complexity of human connection led her to create dynamic sculpture in which individual components are in communication with each other. Each work represents the artist’s visceral expression and serves as a map of her life as a daughter, wife, mother and friend.

Lori Cozen-Geller grew up in Los Angeles, California. Her education includes a BA from the University of Southern California. She has exhibited throughout New York, Los Angeles, Aspen, Germany, and China. Cozen-Geller’s work is found in public collections such as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Ventura Country Museum in Ventura, California and the MOAH, Museum of Art and History in Lancaster, California.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

La Jolla, September 1st, 2017 – Madison Gallery and Modern Luxury Magazine of San Diego present In two Worlds, internationally celebrated artist Hunt Slonem’s fourth solo exhibition at Madison Gallery. Slonem, known for his neo-expressionist works featuring butterflies, bunnies and tropical birds, has catapulted into the collections of the world’s top museums, including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney among others. His oeuvre has been described as grandiose, impressive and extravagant; all evident in his unique feeling for color and texture. These paintings are a celebration of the vibrancy of nature, as Hunt compares them to meditations or the visual equivalent of a mantra.
The opening reception will feature a book signing by the artist of his recent publication Birds along with fan favorite Bunnies.

Since 1977, Hunt Slonem has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. His work is exhibited globally, in cities including Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Slonem’s work is in over eighty museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Kansas City’s own Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He is highly collected by artists and celebrities alike like Yoko Ono, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Stone, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz and Mary Tyler Moore, among others.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

La Jolla, July 18th – Madison Gallery proudly presents New York City based artist James Austin Murray’s first West Coast solo exhibition, Light On Black. Known for his large-scale, monochromatic ebony oil paintings, Murray’s work titillates the viewer to look beyond the black canvas and see infinite colors and forms. His gestural brushstrokes create wave patterns which reflect light from the surface and provide a layered and wondrous landscape that is sexy and ever mysterious. The black paint becomes a beacon of light in each composition. In darkness there is always light…

The exhibition features a new body of work created during the gallery’s inaugural Artist in Residency program earlier this year. As the first artist selected for the program, the collection reflects the artist’s experience in La Jolla and the West Coast vibe. Light On Black explores the visceral experience of light through new eyes and the chance of new beginnings. For 11 years, Murray was a firefighter, working in the South Bronx, Harlem, the West Village, and on the Lower East Side. During that period, he taught a class at Parsons and ran a gallery with two partners in Tribeca.

James Austin Murray is a graduate of Parsons School of Design, New York, NY (1992). Murray opened and managed the Hartnett-Murray Gallery and The Markham-Murray Gallery in Tribeca, New York. He has exhibited throughout New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and East Hampton, NY. He is a recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship Award for residency at The Vermont Studio Center, VT and has completed residencies at The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY and Bermis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. Murray’s work is found in public collections such Sofitel (Philadelphia, PA), Hotel Palomar (Philadelphia, PA), Four Seasons Hotel (Washington, D.C.), Omni Hotel (Nashville, TN) and Tom Ford (Designer). James Austin Murray lives and works in New York City.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fifth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.
 

La Jolla, March 31st, 2017– Madison Gallery presents James Verbicky’s ninth solo exhibition, Luminescent Mind: A Decade
of Works. For over 10 years James Verbicky has established himself as one of Southern California’s leading contemporary artists under Madison Gallery’s umbrella. From abstraction to mixed media, Luminescent Mind: A Decade of Works will examine Verbicky’s creative progression. Popular culture imagery is used a dialogue between artist and viewer. From his media paintings composed of vintage magazines to his new large-scale ERA series on canvas. Verbicky’s heavily graphic aesthetics play with practice elements of Robert Rauschenberg as the artist prefers to leave interpretation to the viewer. Verbicky’s texts create a realm of constant dialogue between artist and viewer.

Verbicky original works are counted in hundreds of important private, public, celebrity, and museum collections in countries all over the world. He collaborates frequently with philanthropic organizations, using his artwork to raise thousands for nonprofits like Waterkeeper Alliance and the Art of Elysium. His works have been the focus of international exhibitions, from Berlin, to New York City, to Boston, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and have been auctioned by Sotheby’s & Christie’s.

The opening reception will feature an artist lecture led by Madison Gallery owner, Lorna York as part of Madison Gallery Artist Lecture Series. The lecture will focus on the art of collecting as well as the artist’s artistic and creative evolution. Emphasis will be placed on current contemporary art market practices, as well as the importance of collecting contemporary art.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fourth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.
 

JANE BOOTH, MEL DAVIS AND KAREN SILVE: WOMEN PAINTERS APRIL 8TH – MAY 21ST, 2017
MADISON GALLERY PRESENTS JANE BOOTH, MEL DAVIS AND KAREN SILVE: WOMEN PAINTERS

Exhibition dates: April 8th – May 21st, 2017
Venue: 1055 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm, Sunday, 10am – 4pm
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com

La Jolla, December 14th, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents Women Painters a group exhibition featuring the work of abstract artists: Jane Booth, Mel Davis and Karen Silve. Throughout art history many women artist were encouraged to divorce art practice from female experience and self-awareness in order to succeed professionally. This shifted in the twentieth century, as women became an integral part of society and female artists found their space within male-centric art movements, most importantly, Abstract Expressionism. Abstraction became the vehicle in which gender became obsolete, as it centered on movement, color and emotion. The exhibition strives to combat the oft-repeated and false compliment unthinkingly paid to women, that genius has no sex; there may be equality of power, but in its quality and application there will be and must be, difference and distinction.

Like Helen Frankenthaler, Kansas based Jane Booth began staining color directly into large pieces of canvas. She creates a formal vocabulary from this technique. Booth’s style serves as an example of intimacy between artwork and viewer, like a dance her work is free, lyrical and feminine.

Mel Davis derives her style from non-relational, colorful surfaces of post-painterly abstraction. She follows the instinctive elements of reductive abstraction in both her treatment of the canvas and in her use of color and forms.

Portland-based abstract artist Karen Silve midpoints the extraordinary dichotomy between nature and technology and brings together a harmony or colors within pure abstraction. Renowned art writer Ann Landis describes this as a movement “into the realm of pure abstraction, and at this juncture in time, the possibilities appear to be boundless.” Silve utilizes the computer as a design tool and creates vivid landscapes that resonate with memories and senses. As art critic Peter Frank says “Her paintings do not describe or even suggest her surroundings so much as taste of them.”

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fourth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

Exhibition dates: February 18th – April 2nd, 2017
Venue: 1055 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 18th
Opening Reception Hours: 6-8 p.m.
Artist Lecture Hours: 7-8 p.m.
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com

La Jolla, December 1st, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents Donald Martiny’s second solo exhibition, Pittura A Macchia. The title refers to the disparagement of Italian Renaissance Master Titian’s late career works as “patchy pictures” or pittura a macchia. Up until Titian’s years, artists aspired to create smooth and unbroken surfaced compositions. This influenced an important shift in art history that centered on the physiological connection between artist and material. As art critic and writer Ann Landi acutely stated, “up close the visible brushstrokes bring us nearer to the artist because they are such clear evidence of a hand following the dictates of the mind and eye.”

Martiny’s work concentrates on the importance of the brushstroke as a real means of connection between artist and material. In his own words: “because every gesture in the painting does something different. I realized that the architecture of the brushstrokes was as important to the painting as other elements, like color and drawing.” Said brushstrokes are big, lush, exuberant sweeps of pigment that are neither paintings nor sculptures, but hover in a space all their own. The artist employs pigments, polymer and gallons of paint, sometimes between 30-40 at a time, to create the right color and viscosity to produce each individual composition. He not only utilizes wide brushes and sponges, but also uses his hands and body in order to create a harmonious choreography. He creates a gap between painting and sculpture and rejects the two-dimensional canvas or panel to establish a relationship between space and viewer.

Martiny’s work has been exhibited in numerous museums, including the Fort Worth Museum of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, Alden B Dow Museum of Art, Falmouth Museum, and the Cameron Art Museum. In 2015 Martiny received a commission from the Durst Organization to create two monumental paintings that are permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. In 2015 Martiny received the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts Residency Grant and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, NPR, Philadelphia Inquirer, VOGUE LIVING | Australia, New American Paintings | South and Woven Tale Press.

The opening reception will feature an artist lecture led by acclaimed art critic and writer Ann Landi as part of Madison Gallery Artist Lecture Series. Landi is a contributing editor of a contributing editor of ARTnews for over 20 years and writes frequent reviews for The Wall Street Journal. She is also the author of the four-volume Schirmer Encyclopedia of Art and the founder/editor of Vasari21.com. Landi holds degrees in art history from Princeton and Columbia.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fourth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

La Jolla, October 17th, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents noted South Korean artist Jaehyo Lee’s second solo exhibition, The Principles of Nature. The artist creates a direct narrative with nature in his innovative approach and creative process. Combining distinct traces of Land Art, Arte Povera and Minimalism Lee´s works cast a questioning eye over the roots of form, its function and its role within the natural world. The sculptures of polished big cone pine, larch, and chestnut act in unison, embodying both natural and manmade forms; they enhance the natural possibilities of the wood, a material with suggestively lyrical qualities. Lee not only makes projects about nature, he also works within nature, so that his sculptures both describe and exemplify the natural world.

Some of his wooden sculptures might appear as though the spaces between the trunks have been filled in with a black substance but this is merely due to the effects of charring and shadows. To apply a finishing touch to his wood and nails sculptures, Jaehyo Lee first burns the materials and then sands down the exposed faces to create a high contrasting colours. Texture is important to the artist, as he emphazises the façade of the wood. The surface reveals the character of its making, becoming indicative of the creative process and holding interest by itself.

Jaehyo Lee’s artwork plays with the oft-contested boundaries between contemporary art and design. Lee’s works are widely collected in public and private collections across Europe, Asia and North America. Amongst many other distinctions Jaehyo was in 1998 Grand Prize Winner at the Osaka Triennial and in 2002 recipient of the prestigious Irish Sculpture in Woodland commission.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fourth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.
 

La Jolla, August 22nd, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents German artist Udo Nöger’s solo exhibition, No More – No Less. Nöger works in a minimalist tradition, reducing everything he does “to a point where there is no more, no less”— a statement that captures the delicate balance anchoring his pared-down aesthetic. This quest toward a conscientious reduction of visual information, however, plays a supporting role in the artist’s primary cause: light.
In Nöger’s art light enters into the painting, illuminating the forms and then returning to the surrounding space that is its source. The paintings media is oil and acrylic on layered canvas and fabric, which trap the light so as to transform it and send it back. Through his singular approach and unique suite of mediums, Nöger is ‘able to set the surface free’ to get the purest light possible. The innovative construction draws viewers in while at the same time requiring them to step back, refocus, and reconsider.

Udo’s works are part of numerous permanent public collections including Metropolitan Museum, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany; Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany; Margulies Collection, Miami, FL; Microsoft, Chicago; Microsoft, San Francisco; Red Rock Hotel, Las Vegas, NV; and Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas, NV.

The Opening Reception will feature an artist lecture led by acclaimed art critic, poet and curator Peter Frank, Associate Editor of Fabrik magazine. Frank has contributed to many publications including the Huffington Post, The Village Voice, and LA Weekly and has written numerous catalogues for major exhibitions. He has worked curatorially with such institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, and Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and has taught at several prestigious institutions including the Pratt Institute, Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and University of California campuses in Irvine, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California. Blouin Modern Painters Magazine has recognized our program for the fourth year in a row as one of the Top 500 galleries worldwide.

UDO NÖGER: LIGHT MAKES WHITE

Light is permanent and yet always different. – (Dr.) Tayfun Belgin
By Peter Frank

Udo Nöger’s visual universe (and for a painter, visuality is entirety, so this means Nöger’s entire universe) is founded on a field of white. Like Eskimo peoples who have myriad different words for “snow,” Nöger knows, and continues to find, endless variations and derivations on the condition of whiteness. But his is not a minimalist exploration of almost-invisible changes; it is a constant enactment of the drama inherent in a realm of his own invention and constant discovery, one where color is not at issue, light itself is. The human eye adjusts, looking here not for spectral relationships – between blue and green, red and violet – but for tonal relationships or even starker contrasts, between presence and absence, surface and depth. Nöger’s white universe is as rich and complex as any rainbow universe, it just depends on different optical conditions.

Perhaps Nöger’s white compositions, painterly but subtly painted, ought to be compared more to sculpture than to painting. To marble, granite, or plaster sculpture, that is, objects hewn from materials whose coloristic qualities are suppressed, to the point of invisibility. To be sure, the ancients decked out even their most classic and austere statues in often-gaudy renditions of clothing, skin, etc. But all that survived the scouring of time was the stone itself, divested of its colorization. Nöger’s paintings, then, are as white as Michelangelo’s figures, not Praxiteles’. But that’s beside the point: what remains at the core of Western three-dimensional art is a tradition of sculpting in pure-white substances, and this artist working in (apparently) two dimensions emulates that purity – or, more accurately, neutrality – with a grace and fervor similar to Bernini’s or Brancusi’s.

But, again, Nöger does not strive even to infer the third dimension; he only exploits its facture in the construction – the literal construction – of what are ultimately paintings, accretions of pigment meant to be viewed frontally. He paints and lets the paint affect the eye as it will, breathing in and out in an atmosphere of white. At the same time, there is a certain inference of depth in Nöger’s canvases. Portions of those canvases have been rendered translucent, allowing us a view through to the other side. Back there it’s a different breath of whiteness, deeper and quieter than the vivid, icy clouds that cling to the painting’s surface. But “surface” does not mean any sort of extruded picture plane on which brushstrokes accumulate sensually. Rather, everything seems to happen behind an even, featureless scrim, a delicate membrane that, our eyes tell us, has collected bursts of frigid light. Nöger’s white pigment seems to radiate an unearthly glow, its milkiness bespeaking something at once frozen, fluid, and ethereal, a vapor in the process of crystallizing.

Nöger achieves his peculiar, haunting, optically improbable effects not simply by limiting his palette to a relatively stringent array of whites, but by applying those white pigments to canvases which are then stacked, at least three at a time, to comprise a single painting. The strategic application of paraffin (i.e., processed mineral) oil provides the canvases, certainly the top ones, with their translucency. Cut-out areas, especially in the interleaved surfaces, further complicate the relationships between the canvases and the visual space, at once shallow and infinite, established between them. Nöger’s paintings are no mere pictures. Rather, even as they present themselves as wall-hung tableaux, their construction establishes them as places of a sort, containers for a dynamic that is limited in its formula but staggeringly varied in its effect.

Nöger, and many who have commented on his work, have stressed that the essence of his painting is light. After all, he limits his palette to white and subjects his compositions to a structural format and a method of applying substances that together modify how light passes through the disparate areas of pigmental accretion and absence. By doing so, Nöger achieves a radiance that escapes its shapes even as it highlights, even haloes, them. He has even called one of his recent series Lichtfluss, or “Lightflow.” (Tellingly, another series is called Gleiches, which translates as “Equivalents,” but can also mean, or at least infer the concept of, “Simultaneities” – pointing at the coincident, and thus combined, “events” occurring on and between the layers of each stacked painting.)

Nöger has spent much of his professional life far from the cloudy skies of his native west-central Germany, preferring the sun-filled atmospheres of Spain, Mallorca, Colorado, Hawaii, south Florida, and now southern California. Indeed, his work shares qualities of both perception and inventive workmanship with the Light-and-Space movement associated with the Golden State. But light is only where Nöger’s art begins; having engaged light and substance in such an elaborate, balletic, multi-tiered interplay, his art culminates in a kind of retinal theater – not an abstract trompe-l’oeil so much as an uncanny dissipation of landscape space, or some kind of space, into pure luminosity, as if Joseph Mallard William Turner were painting a snowstorm or staring into the sun itself.

Compared often to Lucio Fontana, Nöger’s approach – evident no less in his singly-layered works on paper than in his multi-tiered paintings – does not call attention to its materiality, as Fontana’s does, but to its immateriality. In this respect, he can be seen as Turner’s descendant, and Monet’s, and even Rothko’s. And with theirs, Nöger’s activation of the visual field with what seems monochromatic nuance bespeaks a kind of ecstasy of the void – not a descent into the pitch-black absence of color but an ascent into the delirious every-color cacophony of white. The evident impasto of Nöger’s painterly application brings a grounding materiality to what might otherwise seem mirage-like markings, hovering as they do behind a seemingly dematerialized screen. At the same time, his whiteness seems heavenly, a losing of self in the clouds, even a foretaste of the white light that supposedly brings our consciousness to its final apotheosis. But these are poetic postulates; enticing as they are, they pull us away from the immediate experience of the paintings even as they propose a bracing existentiality. Udo Nöger does not begrudge us our metaphors. But neither does he indulge them at the expense of vision itself. Evocative as they are, these hyper-paintings are not meant to be pictures of anything nor evocations of any states of being, but only visual stimuli – equivalents of themselves, nothing more, or less, than the ebb and flow of light through a variety of suspensions. They provoke metaphysical associations not because they should, but because they can. And, primarily, they provoke pure sensation, entirely for its own sake. These are paintings not about light, but of light.

Los Angeles
October 2016

ROBERT MONTGOMERY LIGHT AS POETRY AUGUST 6TH – OCTOBER 2ND
MADISON GALLERY PRESENTS ROBERT MONTGOMERY: LIGHT AS POETRY

Exhibition dates: August 6th – October 2nd, 2016
Venue: 1055 Wall Street, La Jolla, CA 92037
Opening Exhibition: Saturday, August 6th, 2016
Opening Exhibition Hours: 6-8 pm
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com

La Jolla, June 20th, 2016 – Madison Gallery proudly presents new work by Scottish artist and poet, Robert Montgomery. Following the tradition of conceptual art, Montgomery creates thought-provoking sculptures out of LED lights and text. With these works, he addresses all-encompassing, universal themes such as power, love, and human kindness in electric light—or, dramatically, even fire. These poems affirm his philosophical beliefs, as he categorizes them as “melancholic post-Situationist,” and his personal connection for British-Celtic traditions of the mystical lands as written by W.B. Yeats and William Blake. His simple, graphic poems have since been plastered, often illegally, over advertisements and billboards internationally. The British artist selected for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, the first biennale in India, Montgomery has had solo exhibitions at venues across Europe and Asia, including a recently mounted, major outdoor light installation on the site of the old US Air Force base at Tempelhof in Berlin, with Neue Berliner Räume. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions at venues as diverse KOP, Breda, NL; Athens Festival, GR; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR; 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, IT; The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK; The Grand Palais, Paris, FR; Guido Costa Projects, Turin, IT; The Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh Scotland; and The BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle-Gateshead, UK.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

Email info@madisongalleries.com for inquiries.

La Jolla, May 7th, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents Hunt Slonem’s third solo exhibition, When Art Meets Design. Arguably one of the most fascinating artists of our time, Slonem has remained a representational and expressionist artist even during conceptualism’s dominance. He is one of the few contemporary artists that have remained true to himself and his style. When Art Meets Design celebrates Slonem’s approach to color and defined aesthetics with new selected artworks featuring Slonem’s popular series of bunnies, butterflies, birds and new landscapes.

The opening reception will feature a book signing by the artist of his recent publication “When Art Meets Design”. The book celebrates Slonem’s fascination with collecting and design. As the artist says “to create decoratively is to live decoratively.”

Since 1977, Hunt Slonem has had more than 350 exhibitions at prestigious galleries and museums internationally. His work is exhibited globally, in cities including Madras, Quito, Venice, Gustavia, San Juan, Guatemala City, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Slonem’s work is in over eighty museum collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and Kansas City’s own Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He is highly collected by artists and celebrities alike like Yoko Ono, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Stone, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Anne Hathaway, Cameron Diaz and Mary Tyler Moore, among others.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

La Jolla, June 18th, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents Toronto based artist Shelley Adler’s new exhibition, Studies. This exhibition will feature several new small-scale, oil paint studies of the female form. While the scale of the paintings is purposely small, they exude strength and unhinged emotion in their color and composition. Adler’s distinctive use of color enhances each sitter’s personality and individuality as her purposeful use of color symbolizes emotion and consciousness. While her work could be regarded as portraiture, it is not a reflection of the subject but the artist process and her innate curiosity about the sitter.

Shelley Adler has exhibited widely throughout Canada. She has had solo shows at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto (2006, 2009), Andrea Meislin (2008) and has participated in group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, including Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London (2008). Adler received her MFA from Boston University in 1987. She graduated from York University in Toronto in 1983 and attended Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 1982.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.
 

La Jolla, March 19th, 2016 – Madison Gallery presents Gods of Suburbia, a new collection of photographs by Dina Goldstein. The work is a visual analysis of religious faith within the context of the modern forces of technology, science and secularism. The series plays with narrative and religious iconography in order to communicate how organized belief has become twisted within the global framework driven by consumerism and greed. Goldstein creates a dialogue with the viewer and challenges him/her to embark on a journey of self-reflection as they contemplate the relevance of dogma in modernity.

Satire combined with social-political undertones play an integral part of Gods in Suburbia, while portraying the treatment of the most vulnerable individuals in society to homeless, unemployed and social alienated. Goldstein remains respectful to all gods and deities while utilizing satire within a contemporary narrative as she places them in vulnerable situations that question our humanity.

Vancouver based, internationally award-winning photographer, Pop Surrealist and cultural critic, Dina Goldstein’s work deals with the human condition. Past series includes In the Dollhouse and Fallen Princesses. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, France, India, Israel, Colombia and the 2012 Venice Biennale. She is the winner of the grand price Prix Virginia in 2014.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

La Jolla, January 23rd, 2016 – Madison Gallery proudly presents at its new location, 1055 Wall Street; Dynamics/Confluence, a new collection from artists Lori Cozen-Geller and Jeff Kahm. This exhibition explores a dialogue of opposites and the inherent duality that exists between the artist and the viewer. Through use of form, texture and material the artwork aims to shift our perspective of human interaction.

Los Angeles-based artist Lori Cozen-Geller explores the dynamics of human interactions. Shared perspectives and opposing viewpoints are reflected in the pieces as they are positioned accordingly and interact with each other playing against space. There is both a sense of seriousness and a sense of playfulness that is intended to be felt by the viewer as the multiple components in the artworks speak to each other through movement, texture, materials and color rather than by the use of traditional literal verbiage.

In the tradition of indigenous cultures, Canadian born artist Jeff Kahm uses abstract and geometric motifs to create and convey meaning; such forms were pivotal to the early development of visual cultures across many societies. Through his work, Kahm presents a confluence of distinctive artistic components including the dialog between past and present, the interaction of form and content and the boundless expressive capacity of logic and intuition in the making of a work of art. Combined with inventive use of materials and the medium – quality and meaning follow. “Art is a gift – an inspiration reflecting the unlimited creative power of the human spirit and my love of painting is a celebration of that gift.”

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

La Jolla, December 11th, 2015 – Madison Gallery is pleased to present Urban Landscapes, Argentina, a new collection of works by CEO, philanthropist and artist Bill Rastetter. In this exhibition, Rastetter reflects on Argentina’s political activism and cultural fracture derived from the socio-political tumult of the mid 1960s. The showplace for art could no longer be a gallery or a museum and could no longer restrict itself of addressing an exclusive audience. Graffiti became a means of artistic and cultural dialogue. Urban Landscapes juxtaposes cultural and political realities still active in the Argentinean lexicon.

With Graffiti Mash-Ups, Rastetter creates a broader spectrum of experience for the viewer by “mashing up” two separate images to create each of the final pieces. So, none of the “subjects” in Graffiti Mash-Ups actually exist in the natural world; though they were photographed in Buenos Aires, they cannot be viewed on any street in the city.

Rastetter earned the S.B. degree in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.A. and Ph.D. both in chemistry from Harvard University. When not photographing, he helps fund and grow biotechnology companies. He has played significant roles in the founding and/or operations of IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Biogen Idec, Illumina, Receptos, Fate Therapeutics, Neurocrine Biosciences, Regulus Therapeutics and Cerulean Pharma. He also serves on the Advisory Council for Leerink Partners, a healthcare focused investment bank.
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

La Jolla , May 28 2015 – Madison Gallery is proud to debut a new collection of monumental works by multi-disciplinary, Polish Canadian artist James Verbicky.

Widely known for his mixed media works utilizing vintage paper and resin, Verbicky simultaneously exposes his artistic prowess and elevates his own preceding collage work as he projects his vision onto large scale hand-painted canvases. By aggrandizing his own work he is able to spotlight key forms and content, enveloping the viewer in an overwhelming visual field of media and color. Also on display from his sanskrit-inspired series will be new ‘Vasana’ works, orbs of mesmerizing color, and the much sought-after ‘Citta Samtana’ series.

James Verbicky was born to Polish Canadian parents in Edmonton in 1973. His work was selected by the Societie Nationale des Beaux-Artes for an exhibition at the Carrousel du Louvre at the Louvre in Paris, France. His work is counted in many important private, public and celebrity collections worldwide, and he exhibits internationally from Berlin to Mexico City to across the United States. He currently works by the beach in southern california, where he lives with his wife and two children.

MADISON GALLERY PRESENTS PHILIP BULLER, BOAZ VAADIA, NATALIA WROBEL: SUMMER GROUP SHOW
 
Exhibition dates: August 22nd – September 22th, 2015
Venue: 1020 Prospect St. Ste. 130, La Jolla, CA 92037
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com
 
La Jolla August 22, 2015— Madison Gallery is pleased to present a Summer Group Show, of works by Philip Buller, Boaz Vaadia, and Natalia Wrobel. These artists explore the interconnectedness of the natural and spiritual worlds evoking emotion and memory. Together they create a synthesis of truth and illusion; a phenomenology of expressive experiences and perception.

Philip Buller is a designer as well as a painter. He prefers working on large-scale paintings, exploiting ambiguity and incorporating abstract elements to create naturalistic, captivating works of art suggesting universal themes. His work reflects his respect and admiration for the Renaissance and Baroque masters while including references to photography, printmaking and other more contemporary processes.
Boaz Vaadia is an Israeli born internationally acclaimed sculptor whose timeless, evocative stone figures now inhabit museums, cultural sites, art galleries, and private collections. Starting in 1985, generic representations of man and woman emerged from Vaadia’s earlier abstract, monumental effigies. Though generalized in form, there is some individuality in each figure, the artist’s intention being to represent the essence of a specific person. “I love people. Each person is unique, as is the work of an artist. It is important that we, as artists, identify our own uniqueness, just as every individual needs to identify his/her own individuality.” This individuality resides in centeredness, not in superficial attributes. It is that which unites us as human beings. Vaadia hand carves slices of slate and bluestone, shaping them to be layers in a kind of topographical map. He stacks the horizontal slabs until the graded silhouette of a person, animal or group emerges. He views the geological layering of the stone as a natural model for his own sculptural process. It seems a logical metaphor for our human layering of experience and memory.
Natalia Wrobel is a Polish-American painter originally from Southern California. Her work examines the dualities necessary for an authentic life and the endurance and adaptability of the spirit. Deeply inspired by poetry and the gravity underlying simple, everyday moments, her paintings explore the liminal realm beyond our physical world, and the interconnectedness of people, nature, history and spirit.
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

DONALD MARTINY GESTURES JULY 11-AUGUST 11, 2015
MADISON GALLERY PRESENTS DONALD MARTINY: GESTURES

Exhibition dates: July 11-August 11, 2015
Venue: 1020 Prospect St. Ste. 130, La Jolla, CA 92037
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com

La Jolla , May 28 2015 — Madison Gallery is pleased to announce the debut exhibition, Gestures, for artist Donald Martiny. Donald Martiny is interested in allowing gesture to escape from the traditional rectangular support and realize its potential in relation to architectural space. Each piece encourages a dialogue between the viewer, the work, and the space contained within.

Donald Martiny was born in Schenectady, New York in 1953. He currently lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and studied at the School of the Visual Arts, The Art Students League in New York, New York University and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His work is in private collections in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

Exhibition dates: May 16th- June 20th, 2015
Venue: 1020 Prospect St. Ste. 130, La Jolla, CA 92037
Contact us: 858-459-0836/info@madisongalleries.com

 
La Jolla May 16, 2015— Madison Gallery is pleased to present Urban Horses, sculptor Doug Owen’s first solo show at Madison Gallery in La Jolla.
 
Situated in the fascinating space between representation and abstraction, Doug Owen’s graceful sculptures offer up a wealth of associations. The horse, his perennial subject, has been a favorite of artists for centuries. In his single-minded devotion to the equine form, Owen joins the ranks of such renowned artists as Frederic Remington and Susan Rothenberg, for whom horses retain a primal, almost mythical power. Like them, he also makes his home in the Western U.S., where horses further connote the complex history of the American frontier.
 
Although Owen’s forms undoubtedly resemble horses, they can also be seen as pure assemblages of faintly recognizable objects, namely car, tractor, and motorcycle parts. Owen’s choice of medium imbues his sculptures with a touch of irony: his horses are constructed out of the very material that ultimately replaced them. At the same time, these vintage vehicle parts are themselves obsolete, and carry with them a certain nostalgic air. In their incorporation of found objects, the sculptures recall the work of artists like Ed Kienholz and Noah Purifoy, whose sculptures likewise use manufactured detritus to create new, powerful structures.
 
A culmination of 40 years of artistic exploration, Doug Owen’s sculpture has garnered an international following in recent years. He currently lives and works in western Colorado with his two sons. Urban Horses will feature 9-10 new works created especially for this exhibition.
 
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.
 

La Jolla March 19, 2015— Madison Gallery is pleased to present two photo projects by Vancouver based artist, Dina Goldstein exploring the human condition.
 
Dina Goldstein is a Canadian photojournalist and conceptual photographer. Her photography is intended not to produce an aesthetic that echoes current beauty standards, but to evoke and wrest feelings of shame, anger, shock and empathy from the observer so as to inspire insight into the human condition.
As the artist states: “I have always felt that my photojournalism complements my conceptual photography — they inform each other technically and creatively. From photojournalism, I have learned that spontaneity and a lack of control are sources of inspiration. This has inspired trust in my instincts to nurture the most fleeting of concepts. For example, my Fallen Princesses series was born out of deep personal pain, when I raged against the “happily ever after” motif we are spoon fed since childhood. The series, which is included in this package, created metaphor out of the myths of fairy tales, forcing the viewer to contemplate real life: failed dreams, pollution and ocean degradation, war, obesity, the extinction of indigenous cultures, cancer and the fallacy of chasing eternal youth. By embracing the textures and colours created by Walt Disney, which built a multi-billion dollar empire exploiting these fairy tales, Fallen Princesses exposed the consumerism that has negated the morality of these ancient parables. It also begged the question, “how do we define the concept of ‘good’ and how do we live a ‘good’ life?” – Dina Goldstein
 
‘Fallen Princesses’ is an ironic look at children’s parables, from Grimm fairy tales to Walt Disney. By placing iconic characters such as Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White in modern situations, the series became a commentary on such everyday scourges as poverty, obesity, cancer and pollution.
‘In the Dollhouse’ is a series that plays out as a narrative, peeking into the home and marriage of the world’s most iconic dolls, Barbie, and her partner Ken. It offers a profound commentary on the transient nature of beauty, the difficulty of marriage and the importance of authenticity.
Dina Goldstein has exhibited widely throughout North America, Europe and the Middle East. Most recently, she received the 2014 Prix Virginia award, an international prize for women photographers. Her work has been covered extensively by press associations and art critics.
 
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

La Jolla February 12, 2015— Madison Gallery is pleased to present new work by Toronto based artist, Shelley Adler exploring the female figure.

From early cave painting to the Mona Lisa and Andy Warhol portraiture is a formidable artistic tradition. Shelley Adler’s paintings of people’s faces are not portraits in the strict sense of the word in that portraits are formulated primarily as likenesses of the sitter. In Adler’s painting, the face is a springboard to a luminous and freeform tableau. They are less about the sitter than the internal processes of the artist and her intense curiosity about people, about the ways of looking, and about the act of painting. These considerations are delicately balanced to reflect a deep humanism. With generous brushstrokes and vibrant planes of light, Adler forms the face into an elemental and iconic essence. Each painting is endowed with a particular, individual energy through color and composition. Color and its link to emotion is a primary concern and although Adler employs eccentric, non-naturalistic color, the faces have a very real quality. Like David Hockney, Adler often paints people she knows. For Hockney, capturing a subject’s likeness, and especially his or her personality, can only be properly done with the human touch, or as he says, “it has to be directed through my heart to my eye to my hand.” More so, Adler’s oil paintings are commanding in their painterly exuberance and stunning range of color. Using fragments of contemporary life, Adler’s psychological portraits explore gender and identity, creating a balance between interior and exterior worlds.
Perspectives will feature eight medium to large scale oil paintings of female figures. In addition to her portraits, Adler will also present one of her atmospheric paintings of an interior table setting in a large-scale diptych format. This will be Shelley Adler’s first solo exhibition with Madison Gallery.
Shelley Adler has exhibited widely throughout Canada. She has had solo shows at Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto (2006, 2009), Andrea Meislin (2008) and has participated in group exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, including Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London (2008). Adler received her MFA from Boston University in 1987. She graduated from York University in Toronto in 1983 and attended Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 1982.

Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

Exhibition dates: January 17th – February 28th, 2015
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 17th, 6 – 9 pm
 
Madison Gallery is pleased to present new work by emerging New York artist Miya Ando exploring transitory nature of time and place.
 
A descendant of Bizen sword makers, Ando was raised among Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan. Combining traditional techniques of her ancestry with modern industrial technology, she skillfully transforms sheets of metal into ephemeral, abstract paintings suffused with color.

The foundation of Ando’s practice is the transformation of surfaces. She applies heat, sandpaper, grinders, acid and patinas to metal canvases,irrevocably altering the material’s chemical properties to produce subtle, light-reflective gradations of color and texture. The resulting works subtly evoke ethereal, minimalist landscapes, cloud formations and abstracted metallic horizons.

Ando’s goal is to create a relationship between her industrial materials and the natural world. “I’m interested in elemental and material transformations, so I look to materials that can show a duality. Hard metal becomes ethereal and reflects light differently throughout the day, or becomes something that captures changing light, as in the sky,” she says. “The paintings are about finding harmony and balance between the man-made and natural.”

The exhibition will explore this harmony with a new body of work focused on the transitory passing of the day into the hush quietness of evening. Additionally, Ando will utilize her skills as a sculptor to explore new mediums such as glass to isolate cloud fields and Japanese Bodhi leaves hand-dyed in hues reminiscent of evening light.

Whether or not one sees her works as landscapes or seascapes is not important, what is critical is that one sees her art as vital studies of color and light that have the power to influence our emotions and offer a quiet space for contemplation.

Ando’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including a recent show curated by Guggenheim curator Nat Trotman. Miya’s public commissions include project in South Korea, London, New York and California. Her work appears in many important public and private collections and she was the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012, the Thanatopolis Special Artist Award and Public Outdoor Commission Winner and Puffin Foundation Grant winner. She received her Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in EAst Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and continued her studies at Yale University, in addition to serving as an apprentice to a master metal smith in Japan.

Please check back for more information about this exhibition.

Madison Gallery is pleased to present “Bunnies” an exhibition and book signing by internationally recognized American painter, Hunt Slonem. This will proudly be the 2nd solo exhibition for Slonem’s painting ; a new body work from 2014 will be revealed.
 
Exciting, unexpected, realistic, impressionistic, abstract – the bunny paintings of celebrated artist Hunt Slonem have something for everyone. Every morning Slonem awake and performs what he calls his “daily warm-ups.” Within the course of half-an-hour, the artist paints rabbits on a series of small rectangular panels made of wood and Masonite, each work a post-expressionist narrative gesture of the artist in his element. John Berendy describes the process as. “…the artistic equivalent of calisthenics in which he flexes his painting apparatus to establish control over the colors, shapes and textures that flow from his mind’s eye through his arm, hand, and brush on the painted surface.”
 
Slonem’s paintings as a collection appear here for the first time in Bunnies, a treasury of enchanting paintings that are at once pop culture and fine art, in four-color and black-and-white. As Bruce Helander writes in the introduction to the book, “Perhaps it was the rabbits that inhabited his childhood yard in Kittery, Maine that made an indelible impression on the artist and now manifests itself in his illustrious career…The use of a bunny as a subject has a distinct and delightful charm of its own. Slonem takes a cue from a bunny’s soft and independent character, usually one at a time in a portrait that convincingly accommodates tall, unruly ears and some long whiskers to boot. His are a line-up of fuzzy likenesses that are created quickly and forcefully with a clear sense of compassion and precision even thought they are purposely abstract.”
 
Bunnies is a unique compendium of paintings by a fine artist with a worldwide reputation that provide a remarkable ode to one of Nature’s more beloved and mythical creatures, ready to bring good fortune to every lucky viewer.
 
Hunt Slonem is the internationally recognized American painter. His work has been exhibited in more than 350 galleries and museums worldwide, and is represented in over 100 museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim and The Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York City. He exhibits regularly at both public and private venues around the world, and has received numerous honors and awards, including a MacDowell Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts grant. He lives in New York City and Louisiana, where he has notably restored two important plantations to their original states.
 

For Immediate Release:
March 2014 – (San Diego, CA)
Madison Gallery is pleased to present a summer solo exhibition in the main salon featuring the latest works of one of Madison Gallery’s most popular and prolific artists, James Verbicky. In ‘Mode Selector’, Verbicky once again brings an entirely new and breathtaking collection of original works to the gallery, and his originality never disappoints. In his 8th exhibition with Madison Gallery, Verbicky will be displaying an amalgamation of his media paintings, including works from his ‘Citta Samtana’, ‘Force Bloom’, ‘Monetaire’, and ‘Blitz’ series. The artist will also be displaying his gorgeous Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder at the opening reception, which features his latest work ‘Mode Selector’ on the car itself. Verbicky utilized a unique canvas, a luxury automobile, to impress upon the viewer the themes that inspired his work: our overuse and reliance upon graphic icons and brands in media, and their discordant effect on the senses.
 
In an entirely different and more organic vein, Verbicky will also be revealing a new series of breathtaking butterflies entitled ‘Papillon En Fleur’, or, ‘Butterfly in Bloom’. The first of this series will be featured for the May 2014 Neiman Marcus catalogue. The artist drew upon his time spent in France during his juried exhibition with the Societie Nationale des Beaux-Arts at the Louvre in 2008 for inspiration.

Matt Devine & Jeff Kahm
“Between the LINES”
On View: February 15, 2014 – March 15, 2014
Opening Reception: Saturday, : February 15, 2014
6:00–9:00 p.m. rsvp only.

Madison Gallery
1020 Prospect, Ste 130
La Jolla, California

For Immediate Release:

January 2014 – (San Diego, CA)
Madison Gallery is pleased to present a two-man exhibition pairing sculptor, Matt Devine and painter, Jeff Kahm in “Between the LINES.”
The line is the first species of quantity, with only one dimension, namely length and is the straight extension between points. The space between two lines can be an infinite array of possibilities but usually a space that is parallel and hard-edged.

“Between the LINES “emphasizes the use of the line and its multidimensional aspect that both Devine and Kahm have mastered.

As his third exhibition at Madison Gallery, Devine will unveil six new works for this exhibition, including a seven foot tall metallic wave constructed of chrome rods. “My work is a meditation on the balance and order of the natural world as well as an effort to manage the discord that arrives from the constant noise of the man-made world. My most recent collection reveals an expansion of clarity, a more complex expression of this balance while attempting to harness the chaos of our surroundings in controlled and meaningful form.” – Matt Devine

The balance of Matt Devine’s artwork is curated alongside the hard-edged acrylic paintings of Canadian artist, Jeff Kahm. Kahm’s indigenous heritage has influenced his minimalistic paintings by creating a layering process of pigment and paint that reveals the under-paint. Combined with indigenous design motifs and appreciation for post modernism and color field abstraction, Kahm reiterates the powerful simplicity of the line. With influences of geometric abstractionists such as Frank Stella and Ken Noland, Kahm exploits the historic relevance of the linear form.

“Geometric structures like stripes are the most recognizable of all the patterns and have been used throughout the centuries. These structures infinitely repeat and are an effective vehicle for exploring compositional variations.” – Jeff Kahm

“Between the LINES” is a curated exhibition of both new and past works by Devine and Kahm that emphasize the significance of the infinite void inherently created by the execution of the line.

About Madison Gallery
Founded in 2001, Madison Gallery is committed to representing emerging, mid-career and established international artists whom work in a range of media. Inspired by an earnest dedication and passion for art, the gallery consistently exhibits a high standard of contemporary art. Madison Gallery works closely in building private, corporate, and public collections thus placing it amongst the leading contemporary galleries in California.

Gallery Information:
Madison Gallery
1020 Prospect Ave., Suite 130
La Jolla, CA 92037
Phone: 858.459.0836
Fax: 858.459.0790
madisongalleries.com

Hours:
Mon – Sat, 10:00-6:00 p.m.
Sun, 12:00-4:00 p.m.

For Immediate Release:July 2013 – (San Diego, CA)Madison Gallery is pleased to present London based artist Mauro Perucchetti in his first solo exhibition in the United States. The exhibition entitled “The Power of Love” will showcase the artist’s iconic resin sculptures, works from his “hip pop art” series, as well as selected works from his new abstract series entitled “Unicum”.

Mauro Perucchetti’s body of work combines Conceptual, Minimalist, and Pop Art traditions. A pioneer in the use of resin, he incorporates a variety of mediums such as crystals, chrome, gold and steel, appealing to the eyes and the sense of touch; his work is a mirror of modern day materialistic desires. His art takes a critical yet light-hearted approach, relying on symbols to create meaning. He unites Pop aesthetics with social comment to address some of the most pressing and difficult issues in today’s society in a way that is subtle and accessible, without being trite, shocking or obscure. Mauro is above all an artist who is connected; he sees the bigger picture and has his finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary society.

In his new body of artwork, UNICUM, Perucchetti has manipulated his staple resin material, resulting in new, sculptural ways of displaying his art. These sculptures are individual testaments to the medium from which they are formed – matchless in their chemical composition, form, color, texture and size. Yet together, they exemplify a serious achievement for the artist, cementing his place within the canon of Contemporary Art.

Please check back or contact the gallery for more information and images about this exhibition.

Please check back or contact the gallery for more information and images about this exhibition.

Madison Gallery is pleased to present New York City- based artist Hunt Slonem with his first solo exhibition in San Diego: “Butterflies & Rebirth.”

Sublimely decorative yet deeply spiritual, Hunt Slonem’s work is filled with light and color, with exotic birds, animals, saints, and Hollywood stars.  His art celebrates the glory of life while underlining the threats that our civilization poses to the natural world.

Slonem’s canvases emphasize an aesthetic of ocular activity; the viewer’s eye is set in almost constant motion, flicking about to take in the entire rectangle.  The butterflies themselves come into focus as his central subject only after the few seconds it takes to apprehend the whole painting.  They are rarely in sharp focus; their shapes are somewhat misted and often repeated, so as to create a pattern which itself must be uncoded.  Again, this all happens in only a few seconds, before the creatures can be given individuation and appreciated as belonging to a distinct species.

These matters of “only a few seconds” may seem at first to be hardly worth mentioning, but to the practiced viewer (and to anyone looking at a picture – although the process can be a much slower one) the visual experience is instantaneous.  You know as much about a painting in the first blink of the eye as you will ever know.  Everything else, thoughts about the subject, about technique, about meaning, come later, as our mental and verbal skills hurry to keep with what the eye already knows.

The visual field of Hunt Slonem’s paintings is a continuum accented by varying shapes and colors that, it turns out, are butterflies.  What species the butterfly belongs to, while important to him, is not his entire concern; hard-edged ornithological accuracy does not form part of his intention or indeed, of his aesthetic. Slonem’s butterflies are rendered sufficiently clearly to be identifiable.  They are most often in a form of softened focus, as if some painterly plane has inserted itself between the viewer and the butterflies.

The foreground, the grids themselves, are a brilliant post-cubist compositional device in Slonem’s work, made by scratching freehand lines in the wet paint, over the butterflies, with the point-end of a brush he whittles himself.  In order to achieve this effect, Slonem has to work fairly fast, painting wet and then scratching into the paint before it dries.

In all of Slonem’s work, after one has studied it for a time, there is seriousness about painting.  The various devices that divide the space, render it shallow, thus keeping the work coherent in its own terms, adds up to a consistent investigation of post- cubist abstraction.  By varying the moods and techniques of his work in fresh and exciting ways, Hunt Slonem creates a beautiful work that continually gives joy and surprise.-Henry Geldzahler

For Immediate Release
December 8, 2012 San Diego, CA

Madison Gallery is proud to present new works by mixed media artist James Verbicky.

“These artworks derive from and exist in the social realm, but they burrow beneath the fast-flowing surface of that realm to excavate its lyricism, mourn its fast-fading tactility (one subtheme coursing through the Media Paintings rues the dying of print as the predominant communication medium), and insist on its history, its cultural memory. Will we be remembered for our artifacts, as other civilizations are? Verbicky proposes that we will be remembered even more for the way
such artifacts reach those who desire them, and for how the producers of artifacts are able to induce such desire. Image, language, and the imaging of language figure crucially in this manipulation of perceived need, and Verbicky isolates imaged language – brand names and logos, headlines and titles – from its contexts in order
to derail, or perhaps magnify, its potency. How many of these logos and titles do you recognize? How do you regard them here, cut loose from the ad pages and flyers, product placements and pop-ups? What do you possess?”

– Huffington Post Art Critic Peter Frank, 2012

About The Artist: James Verbicky

James Verbicky was born in Canada from Polish descent. As an adult, he moved to the U.S., and after struggling with legitimacy for many years, was awarded the rarely bestowed “Extraordinary Ability” green card from the U.S. government due to his extensive involvement with a myriad of museums, galleries, charity organizations, and publications across America.

In 2008, Verbicky exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris, with the Societie Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and his media paintings, released in 2010, have garnered an international following. He exhibits around the world from New York City to Berlin, Germany, and his works have been auctioned by Sothebys and Christie’s. Verbicky originals are counted in thousands of private, public, celebrity and museum collections in countries all over the world.

For Immediate Release
San Diego, California

During the art process, Cozen-Geller looks to capture the emotions of the heart and mind and places them into visual form within space. “This process is a kinetic one for me. It is a journey that begins with a feeling, evolves into a powerful emotion and is then transformed into art. By freezing emotions and placing them into concrete form, I can then sit back and view the strength and meaning that now lies within the piece that has materialized as art. There are several components that merge together to form my work. The dimensions of the piece along with the color and finish represent the power of the emotion that the piece was born out of. The decision to use sharp angles versus soft curves is determined by the nature of the emotions that are being represented. It is as if the emotions themselves dictate the specifications of how the art is developed.” Lori Cozen-Geller grew up in Los Angeles, California. Her education includes a BA from the University of Southern California. She lives in Venice, California and works out of her Venice studio. Lori’s first work took shape within hours of her father’s passing in which the artist translated her feelings of love and loss onto a scrap of paper, the blueprint for her first piece of work. “Although my art is an expression of my own personal feelings, these emotions are universal to all man-kind. Human beings share the same emotional palette even though each of us has a differing set of life circumstances. The energy of life is the fuel that ignites my passion to express.”

Exhibition Summary:

Madison Gallery is proud to announce the solo exhibition, “Energies”, by Lori Cozen-Geller. The work is precise, edgy, immaculate, and bold in nature; built with automotive paint on laminate, wood, fiberglass, and metals. It gives an in-depth look into the power and movement of masculine and feminine energy forces, and the enormous communicative aura often found in female friendships. With her minimalistic approach, Cozen-Geller’s creates an underlying theme of conversing with shapes. An atmosphere is created with the missing components and the various pieces that fit together to become a unified whole. The work speaks to a palette of emotions that is intrinsic to all of humanity, as projected in featured pieces such as: “Confide” and “Follow the Leader”.

Exhibition Summary:
Madison Gallery presents, Return to Nature, new works by South Korean artist, Jaehyo Lee.

Exhibition Details:
Inspired by a recent trip to Brazil, these works are reflections of the artist’s continued quest for spiritual and personal healing. These new paintings create a timeline of Leestemaker’s voyage – viewers are guided through both the physical places and emotional experiences that characterized the profoundly personally and transitional nature of the artist’s journey. In doing such, the viewer is witness to a change within Leestemaker’s work, one that shifts him from the ambiguous landscape to a canvas of enlightenment and painterly nirvana.

Artist Information:
Since graduating in 1992 with a BFA from the Hong-Ik University Jaehyo Lee (1965) has gained acclaim both in his native Korea and internationally for his distinct yet intimately crafted oeuvre. Combining distinct traces of Land Art, Arte Povera and Minimalism Lee´s works cast a questioning eye over the roots of form, its function and its role within the natural world. Lee´s works willfully play with the oft-contested boundaries between modern art and design, referencing the idealist´s cubes, cylinders and cones as perversions of the chaise longue, the coffee table, the lampshade, and even the humble doughnut. Revealing a subtly humorous and unsentimental attitude to nature, what unites these works is a belief that the beauty of art is a product of the labour from whence it comes, whether this be the meticulous carving of larch trunks into the form of a perfect sphere or, equally, the precise bending and sanding of thousands of nails hammered one after another into a hunk of cut lumber. Amongst many other distinctions Jaehyo was in 1998 Grand Prize Winner at the Osaka Triennial and in 2002 recipient of the prestigious Irish Sculpture in Woodland commission. His works are held in public and private collections across Europe, Asia and North America.

For Immediate Release

Madison Gallery is proud to present new works by internationally acclaimed artist Miya Ando. In her work, Miya Ando creates quiet, abstract, meditative environments. Her post-minimalist, hand-dyed aluminum paintings covey her interest in the study of subtraction to the point of purity, simplicity and refinement. Familial history, spiritual and philosophical pursuits deeply inform every aspect of her work. She is influenced through meditation, nature, geometry and the ethos and aesthetics of Zen Reductivism. With a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of metal and its ability to reflect light the artist creates works which are centered on transformation, reflection and transcendence. Metal simultaneously conveys strength and permanence and yet in the same instant can appear delicate, fragile, luminous, soft, and ethereal. The medium becomes both a contradiction and juxtaposition for expressing notions of evanescence, including ideas such as the transitory and ephemeral nature of all things, quietude and the underlying impermanence of everything. Miya Ando has created an exciting new body of work from her Brooklyn studio exclusively for her solo show, Meditations, at Madison Gallery.

About The Artist
Miya Ando is a half Japanese and half Russian- American artist based in New York. She was raised in two worlds: among sword smiths turned Buddhist priests in a Buddhist temple in Okayama, Japan and in a redwood forest in Northern California. She is the descendent of sword maker Ando Masakatsu. Recently Ando’s artwork has been featured on CNN News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She has received international recognition for the 9/11 Memorial Sculpture unveiled in September, 2011 in London. Ando’s work is widely exhibited and collected with public artworks in South Korea, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Her work has been exhibited in Paris, Berlin, Austria, Greece and across the United States.

For Immediate Release

Madison Gallery is proud to present new media paintings by internationally acclaimed artist James Verbicky.
Currently in high demand, these rare pieces stimulate the viewer with both content and texture. The three dimensional surfaces transcend traditional painting and venture into the realm of sculpture, and by utilizing vintage media, advertisements, and obsolete branding materials, Verbicky presents us with the result of decades of attempts to persuade, manipulate, and coerce through subtle and suggestive imagery. His works are at once deeply conceptual and hauntingly beautiful, capturing both forgotten and persisting icons of media and reminding us that we are constantly being influenced.

After exhibiting at the world famous Louvre Museum in Paris, Verbicky’s media paintings have recently been the focus of solo shows in Berlin and New York City, and sold at auction with Sotheby’s.

About The Artist
Born in Canada from Polish descent, James Verbicky lived the majority of his early life in British Columbia. As an adult, he moved to the U.S., and after struggling with legitimacy for many years, was awarded the rarely bestowed “Extraordinary Ability” green card from the U.S. government due to his extensive involvement with a myriad of museums, galleries, charity organizations, and publications across America. Verbicky’s works are now included in important private, public, celebrity, and museum collections all over the world.

Exhibition Summary:
Madison Gallery presents Minimal Thought, current works by abstract painter Richard Roblin and minimalist sculptor, Lori Cozen-Geller.

Exhibition Details:
Exhibition will feature new minimalist sculpture from Lori Cozen-Geller’s original collection. The newest pieces were produced as reflections on her recent journey through Europe. These constructed forms use simplicity to convey the emotions of the heart and mind and place them into visual form and space. 13 wall mounted sculptures will be presented. Additionally, the exhibition features a new series of work from abstract painter Richard Roblin. Entitled “Here and Now” this series explores the use of form, space and color to provoke insight and inner luminosity. Recent acquisitions from the artist’s past series will also be showcased to display the multiple creative periods of Richard Roblin’s career.

Artist Information:
Lori Cozen-Geller is a Los Angeles native and her education includes a BA from the University of Southern California. She lives in Venice, California and works out of her Venice studio. Canadian painter Richard Roblin is an internationally recognized artistic master. His passion for creativity extends through his practice of architecture, design, sculpture and painting. Roblin’s works are exhibited and collected widely through commercial galleries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Exhibition Summary:
Madison Gallery and the Healing Arts Fund present, Living Large, new works by abstract expressionist artist, Luc Leestemaker.

Exhibition Details:
Inspired by a recent trip to Brazil, these works are reflections of the artist’s continued quest for spiritual and personal healing. These new paintings create a timeline of Leestemaker’s voyage – viewers are guided through both the physical places and emotional experiences that characterized the profoundly personally and transitional nature of the artist’s journey. In doing such, the viewer is witness to a change within Leestemaker’s work, one that shifts him from the ambiguous landscape to a canvas of enlightenment and painterly nirvana.

Artist Information:
Luc Leestemaker was born in the Netherlands in 1957. Upon moving to the US in 1990, Leestemaker continued a longstanding cultural tradition in his family by committing himself to painting full time thus following in the footsteps of other European and Dutch artists, notably Willem de Kooning and Mondrian, for whom living and working in the US inspired a dramatic creative transition. With his contemporary landscapes as a solid foundation, recent compositions, as “Voyagers” and “Map of The Wind” have taken the viewer into a new generation of abstract expressionism, in which landscape and abstraction increasingly merge. Leestemaker’s paintings are exhibited throughout the US and internationally, increasingly becoming a part of major corporate and private collections.